"exciting thriller"

On the night of September 10, 2001, Englishwoman Victoria Wentworth plans to ship Van Gogh's classic Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear that she owns to Bryce Fenston, CEO of New York based Fenston Finance; Victoria expects Fenston to sell the masterpiece to a Japanese collector. That same evening someone breaks into Victoria's home, kills her, and slices off an ear; the Van Gogh is stolen.

On September 11, 2001, a plane crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Fenston Finance employee Anna Petrescu manages to escape from the edifice before the tower collapses. She knows that Fenston was planning to keep the Van Gogh painting and that everyone assumes she died in the tragedy. Not correcting the latter, Anna intercepts the Van Gogh. However, goons chase her as she flees London for Hong Kong; FBI Agent Jack Delaney is also in hot pursuit as he sees a link between Fenston and the homicides of three collectors besides Wentworth who were employing him as an intermediary. The globe converges on Anna who now tries to vanish in Bucharest with a Fed and an assassin after her.

This exciting thriller goes over the top, but no reader is going to care as the escapades of Anna fleeing with the painting with a Fed and a lethal female assassin on her trail makes for quite a tense duel. The story line is ultra fast-paced never slowing down from the first impression especially once Anna realizes that everyone assumes she died in the North Tower tragedy until the final triangular confrontation between the good, the bad and the ugly.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted June 18, 2006